Kiwi Kompany Kombucha Kampaign Killed

The New Zealand Herald reports that Australian Remedy Kombucha was forced to pull an advertising campaign that featured a photo of a hand holding a bottle of their ‘booch with the text: “TELL SUGAR TO GET FRUCT”.

The company argued that the slogan “TELL SUGAR TO GET FRUCT” was a bold way of saying “no” to sugar, it did not depict the actual word “fuck” and “fruct” was not used in an aggressive manner or in conjunction with any offensive imagery. The company further described the connection between ‘fruct‘ and ‘fuck’ to be an “obscure connection [sic] and we do not intend or expect that this connection will be made by young children”.

“Especially given the spelling of ‘fruct‘ is quite different to the word ‘fucked’, and phonetically ‘fruct‘ can be pronounced as either ‘frooked‘ or ‘frucked‘.”

However, the New Zealand Advertising Standards Authority complaints board disagreed and said the average Kiwi would automatically read the word ‘fruct‘ as ‘fucked’ because not all consumers knew the word ‘fructose’ was a type of sugar. (Whereas they all presumably know exactly what it takes to get the other.)

Since the advertisement was located in public places, such as shopping malls, giving unrestricted access for anyone in the vicinity, including children the ads by the Kiwi Kombucha Kompany Kampaign was Killed.